A Developmentalist's Guide to Better Mental Health: Navigating Everyday Life Dilemmas

A Developmentalist’s Guide to Better Mental Health offers mental health professionals a practical, philosophical, and playful guide for working relationally and developmentally with dilemmas, muddles, and the emotions that accompany them.

The book centers around dozens of letters from writers asking “the developmentalist” for help with a wide range of issues. Organized by topics and themes―including trauma, family and relationship issues, living with uncertainty, workplace problems, and more―the letters and the developmentalist's thoughtful, thought-provoking responses lay out a wide variety of strategies for inviting clients into developmental journeys. When shared with clients, the letters and responses are a rich resource for therapeutic conversations. The book includes theoretical and conceptual background information as well as commentary from mental health professionals who already use the letters and responses in their practices.

A Developmentalist’s Guide to Better Mental Health is unlike other practical guides in both its format and in its focus on development, especially emotional and social development, as a creative activity.

Lois Holzman, PhD, is co-founder and director of the East Side Institute, the international center for social therapeutics and performance activism.